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Anyway, our plan was to watch Penguins of Madagascar on Netflix because our girl loves the Madagascar films and the Penguins. But Your Wonderful Comcast decided Friday night at 5pm was the perfect time to reboot the Internet. So we dug through our Blu-Ray collection and pulled out Disney’s Tangled.

Tangled is a Disney interpretation of the story of Rapunzel. You can read the Grimm Brother’s version of it here. The Grimm’s telling itself is an interpretation of a story that occurs so often in traditions throughout the world, academics have assigned it a type: Type 310. The movie follows tale closely, but with a notable difference.

In the film, a magical plant grows wild, and the witch, Gothel (musical theater person Donna Murphy) nurtures it, but is certainly not interested in sharing the magic with anyone else. She has used that magic to keep herself alive and youthful for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

The pregnant Queen is dying; the King directs his people to search the countryside for this mythical curative flower. The King’s men pluck the flower and turn it into a single dose elixir that saves Queen and gives their daughter, the princess Rapunzel, played by Mandy Moore, golden hair that can also cure the sick and heal the wounded. When cut, the magic hair dies at the root.

Read the rest here: http://tiwygwymw.us/12p

My favorite part of To Catch a Thief – Alfred Hitchcock’s diamond heist film starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly – is the first 10-15 minutes. We know the movie is set in the South of France because the titles and credits are shown over the window of a Travel agency, advertising the glamour of the Cote d’Azur. At the end of the titles, a woman screams. As the camera moves through the 5-star hotels and ornate villas of Nice Cote d’Azur, more women shriek in horror. A black cat creeps over roofs.

Jump to a villa on a hill, surrounded by grapevines. There, too, is a black cat, very much like the one prowling Nice, sitting on a chair, eyeballing Carey Grant. Grant plays John Robie, a “retired” jewel thief. A car is climbing the hill. Robie loads and places shotgun near his desk. They are police and it seems like he’s not going to go easily… but this is a diversion. He sneaks out of the house and the police follow his auto through narrow streets.

We don’t need a second of exposition to understand what is happening. Hitchcock and the actors have shown us. Women are being robbed of their jewels late at night and the Police believe that Cary Grant’s character is involved in those thefts. Maybe he is? As a viewer, we’re not sure. And we’re never really sure, at least until the very end. All of this is accomplished with images and sound. There is little to no expository dialogue.

Read more of my thoughts here: http://tiwygwymw.us/12k

If you’re of a certain age, you too may remember visits to the video store. If you don’t (drugs, booze, youth), VHS tapes and DVD cases took up a ton of space. Once demand for a title dried up, they were stacked on a table and sold, three or four for $20. So sometimes I bought tapes instead of renting, because, if I’m being honest, I never return anything on time. In the end, $5 was a deal, in the end, even if you ended up that copy of Waterworld no one wanted to permanently borrow.

Twilight was one of those. No, not the silly vampire movie that’s inspired so much fanfic and enforced many ill-considered gender roles. This Twilight was made when Kristen Stewart was a wee baby and stars Paul Newman as private investigator Harry Ross.

In the first act, Harry is down in Mexico looking for Reese Witherspoon‘s character, Mel. She’s (presumably; we never really know) living it up with her much-older boyfriend Jeff (Liev Schreiber) and Harry’s been hired to bring her home to her parents. While he’s dragging her out of the resort, Mel manages to get hold of Harry’s gun. She drops it, it discharges, and the round finds a home near his balls. This is important.

Read the rest of the review here: http://tiwygwymw.us/124

Prospect is a small budget film from 2018 that just showed up on my Netflix queue, so I decided to give it a shot.  It reminded me of a good episode of a science fiction anthology series, or an extra long episode of Firefly, with dialogue written by Elmore Leonard or David Milch.  Prospect clearly falls into that Space Western sub-sub-genre. 

Read more about my recommendation here: http://tiwygwymw.us/11y

Silverado is Old Hollywood, with Big Stars wearing fancy clothes, shiny Colts, and tiny hats. The characters look like it had been 2 days since their last bath, not a more believable 2 months. But that’s fine. It’s fine.

After saving himself from a 3 on 1 ambush and taking one of the bad guys horses, Emmett, craggy Scott Glenn, heads out through prairies, desserts, and mountains to join up with his brother Jake, played by a very very young Kevin Costner.  Along the way he finds Kevin Kline’s Paden laying out under the desert sun in his long johns.  Turn out, Paden had been robbed of his horse, his guns, his hat, and clothes by three men he had met along the trail.  Is it possible that that these bad guys and Emmett’s bad guys are in cahoots?  It is possible, because this is a movie and a lack of coincidence would make a very short movie. 

Read more about it here: http://tiwygwymw.us/11g

Friday Family Movie Night usually goes off just fine but our Girl wanted to have no part of How to Train Your Dragon.  Disney+ holds a wealth of films, many I truly enjoyed as a kid. So we clicked over to the Lion King, the 1994 animated version rather than the creepy, digitally animatronic “live action” version. 

Like most middle-aged women, I’m partial to Timon and Pumbaa.  

Read my review of The Lion King here http://tiwygwymw.us/10f